


we don't say everything that we could (so that we can say later: oh, you misunderstood)

by lodessa



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Apologies, Banter, Bitterness, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Gen, Innuendo, Making Up, Post-Season/Series 04, Self-Hatred, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 14:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20084089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: After the events of Season 4, Veronica shows up to talk.  Eli isn't sure what she really wants or whether he wants to let her.





	we don't say everything that we could (so that we can say later: oh, you misunderstood)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JaqofSpades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/gifts).

> My first (of what will probably be many) attempt to engage with VM after watching the revival season. I honestly wasn't sure if I should even tag this as Veronica/Weevil, because it's just sort of lying there under the surface of this fic, but I had to write them making up (before I would have them making anything else).
> 
> It's also (sort of) a slightly late birthday present for Jaq (which, I am not even sure if you've watched the new season, Jaq, but I couldn't watch VM and write about Weevil and not think of you). Sorry it is not smutty! I'm just not ready yet after everything that happened. I owe you a second (better present).

“What the hell are you doing here, Veronica?” he demands, crossing his arms over his chest as if that can protect him from whatever new verbal right hook she has in store for him today.

“I owe you,” she tells him, which only leaves him feeling more like he needs to be ready for the twist of the knife.

“So?” he shrugs. “What’s the point in keeping track? You made it pretty clear that tab you and me had open with each other, is permanently closed.”

“And then you went and played the hero, with the big cavalry rescue, even if meant pissing off potentially lucrative crime contacts.” 

As usual, there’s that fake sugary tone that reminds him that the hero in that sentence is sarcastic… no that’s not right. It’s hyperbole, that the word his community college English 101 teacher would use: ironic hyperbole. 

Whatever it is, he’s over it and he’s over these little digs that Veronica always seems to have to get in, even when she’s acting like she’s being nice.

“For fucks sake, Veronica. You can’t even muster a proper ‘thank you, Eli, for saving my life’ without insinuating I’m involved with a drug cartel. How many times you I have to tell you-”

“You don’t mess with drugs… I know,” she finishes, reminding him of just how many times they have had that particular conversation. 

She knows why. That’s what makes it worse. Veronica knows shit about him he just doesn’t tell anyone, shit a lot of the time he wishes she didn’t know, but she acts like she doesn’t most of the time.

“Then why do you even say it? Do you really just like to insult me that much? Is it fun for you to get a rise out of me? Or do you really believe I don’t have any sort of lines in the sand I won’t cross?”

He’s too tired to play her little game today. Okay, more than just today. He’s tired, in every sense of the word. There was a time when he would have risen to the occasion anyway, some playful banter and little barbs, something that made him feel like he was something other than a tool for Veronica to pick up when she decided he might be useful. She broke that habit though, tossed it into the trash, and he’s not about to go dumpster diving.

“I know you do,” she swallows, hesitating. “Otherwise even I would not be foolhardy enough to keep pushing like I do.”

It’s not what he expected. He’d thought she’d make some comment about why she has probable cause to throw every accusation in the book at him. Maybe she really is trying something different this time. 

_More like she knows you are pissed and ready to call it quits and she can’t have that, so she’ll step up her approach a little, make you feel like it is going to be different this time_, he warns himself.

“I didn’t do it to put you in my debt, okay. You don’t really think I’m the kind of guy who lets someone I… lets people get murdered, just because it would be convenient.”

He hates that she either thinks that, or at least wants to pretend she does. He has done a lot of shady shit in his time, but if anything part of his problem is that he can’t just be a passive bystander to people getting hurt. And Veronica… better not to think about it.

“I don’t,” she admits, reluctantly, “Look, I was an asshole. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last. How about you make some snide comments and one of us does the other a favor and we act like it never happened?”

There it is, the return to form, the invitation to pretend, to keep on the way they have for so long. He wishes he had been wrong about it, but he isn’t.

“I can’t,” he turns away, pressing his lips together in frustration. “We’re not seventeen anymore, Veronica. I can’t keep doing this thing where you accuse me of shit and then come back with the head tilt and the innuendo.”

“Why?” she asks, seeming actually frustrated, “Why does everyone insist on changing?”

He gets the sense that response is about more than just his, more than this conversation. He wants to ask but he won’t. He won’t for a number of reasons, the least of which is that would mean admitting that he is worried about her, that she hasn’t actually driven him away for good.

“Because that’s life, V. And my life might be shit right now, but I don’t want to stay here wallowing around in it.”

He thinks back to what Claudia had said when he demanded she tell him why exactly she thought it was okay to set her boyfriend on Veronica, why she’d think he would be okay with that shit.

_It’s the only way you’re ever going to be free of her, Eli. For a while things were good, while she wasn’t around, but you are never going to stop offering yourself up for her to step all over, and she’d never going to quite let you go. It’s not healthy, this thing you’re holding onto._

He’d told her she didn’t know shit, but it still haunts him. 

_Your blonde crush,_ she’d said like it was a known fact. Okay, Claudia is his sister and she can’t help the old childhood impulse to tease him, but there’s something about that schoolyard term ‘crush’ that hits home with both with what kid shit the way they treat each other is and being a damned good description of what Veronica does to him. 

He’s too old to keep doing this. They both are, though she seems to want to hold on to some past that was never real.

“I don’t want it to end like this,” Veronica tells him, and he wants to ask her what exactly ‘it’ is.

“I thought it was already over,” he says instead, turning to walk away. “Have a nice life, Veronica.”

“Weevil… Eli,” she corrects and he’s not entirely sure whether he really wants her to make that transition. “It does matter, the history the two of us have. It matters to me. And I think it matters to you, or you wouldn’t keep showing up.”

“You’re the one who came here, remember,” he reminds her, and himself. He knows she can see right through him when she wants to, but he wants them both to remember that he can do it too.

“I wasn’t talking about today,” she tells him, another step forward into territory they marked off limits a lifetime ago, but he knows he’s leading himself on thinking it is a real change, that Veronica will ever so much as admit that maybe they might be something, even friends.

“What do you want?” he sighs, turning back to face her, “I mean really. What do you really want? If we are cutting the bullshit now, no more pretense. Fine. Just admit why you are really here.”

“I don’t know,” she hesitates and it feels so real he wants to believe her. “Maybe I came to apologize.”

“And yet I haven’t heard anything resembling an apology come out of your mouth,” he points out. She hadn’t even managed a thank you really.

“I’m sorry,” she says solemnly. 

“For what?” he prompts. “What exactly is it you are apologizing for?”

It sounds nice, but it is also vague as hell. That could be an apology for not apologizing for all he knows.

“For not considering your reasons, for accusing and threatening you instead of finding a way to work together. For acting like I don’t know you care about Neptune… about me.”

“Damn,” he says, a little stunned, “That almost sounded like a real apology, not that half assed sarcastic substitute I’ve heard from you on the very rare occasions when you seem to actually recognize maybe one is in order.”

Part of him wants to push, to see just how far these new boundaries go, but he also knows better. Doesn’t he?

“I’m trying,” she tells him, again without a smile or an eyeroll. “Jane says that it’s important for me not to use being bad at something as an excuse to avoid doing it.”

“Jane says?” he questions, surprised that Veronica would take advice from anyone, let alone someone he’s never heard of before.

“Logan’s therapist… my therapist. You caught me. I’m in therapy.”

“About time,” he tells her, intending for it to come out sarcastic, but it doesn’t. He can’t help the way his voice softens.

“You aren’t going to tease me about getting my head shrunk?” she seems surprised.

“Why would I tease you about actually doing something good for yourself for once. That’s one of the things that drives me crazy about you, V. You have all these skills and opportunities, and you just insist on making everything hard on yourself every time.”

It would be easier if she wouldn’t do that, if she would just fucking dissapear off into the fucking 09er world she’s always belonged in. But she won’t. She never just stays there, instead she keeps showing up in his world, just long enough to judge him for having to survive here all the time. Veronica acts like she wants to help, but sometimes he can’t help thinking that maybe she just doesn’t want to let herself succeed, so she’s gotta have a hopeless project.

“So what… you like that I’m admitting failure?” she says, with a typically unreasonable interpretation.

“I like that you are taking care of yourself,” he says, refusing to rise to her baiting him to be cutting instead of real. “I could live with us never speaking again, but I think it is pretty clear from recent events that I couldn’t handle you throwing your life away.”

It’s not like she doesn’t know at this point, so why not just admit it? Of course, it is also satisfying to see her knocked off balance by the fact that he admitted it.

“Why do you care?” she asks, “When I have been such a total bitch to you lately?”

Easier for her to insult herself than recognize that he just put himself out there.

“Maybe I’m a little self destructive myself, V,” he admits. 

He doesn’t admit that part of that self destructiveness is the torch he can’t seem to stop carrying for her when half the time she barely seems to see him as human, let alone anything more than that.

“I didn’t mean what I said about Jade, you know,” she says sounding actually apologetic and that fucks him up more than what she’s apologizing for did.

“It’s not exactly wrong, either,” he can’t bring himself to not own. “You know me. That’s why it pisses me off so much when you decided to willfully misunderstand me.”

“It would probably be easier if we didn’t know each other as well as we do,” she concedes and that concession also makes him nervous.

“Since when have you liked when things are easy, chica,” he finds himself sliding back into a playful response, despite his best intentions.

“Are you saying I like it **hard**?” she banters back. 

“Pretty sure you’re the one who always says: if it looks like a duck and it acts like a duck…” he trails off with a shrug.

“What if it looks like a friend and it acts like a friend?” she replies, doing that damned head tilt.

“What if it doesn’t?” 

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Veronica suggests. “Rumor has it I am a totally shitty friend.”

“Rumor has it, you are trying to get better at those very few things you aren’t naturally gifted at,” he points out.

“Point taken.” She nods as if she’s taking in his words. “Just please promise me that, if I say we should hang out when neither of us needs a favor, it isn’t going to include me having to hear about the transcendent properties of hummus.”

“Do I want to know what that’s about?” he questions.

“Probably not,” she tells him, seeming like she’s telling the truth, “If only because it’s boring.”

“Why don’t we start with you buying me a drink, you know to thank me for saving your ass,” he suggests, not really sure how to proceed with this idea about them actually trying at being friends, instead of whatever adjacent thing they have been all this time. 

“And my dad’s,” she adds, “So that’s got to be at least two drinks, minimum.”

“Careful there, V. I might start thinking you’re trying to get me drunk,” he teases.

“You’re the one who suggested drinks,” she points out.

“I suggested a drink. You’re getting ahead or yourself, Veronica,” he tells her, raising his arms up in defeat.

He knows this is probably a stupid idea, but if feels so much better to be talking with her like this. He’s missed Veronica, missed whatever almost friendship and more than it thing they have had over the years. He wants to believe that she can change, that they can change. He wants to believe that Claudia is wrong.


End file.
